In LA so went to Erewhon to see what all the fuss is about. The $22 smoothie tasted like pure sugar and the $11 cough drops (also pure sugar) did not work.

totally gutted

Bought a smart plant monitor and now it feels like my plants are constantly texting me the equivalent of “you up?”

this insect is so beautiful it took me a long time to accept that it really wasn’t AI m.youtube.com/watch?v=FdfX...

A new survey out yesterday highlights just how popular these sorts of tests are: 17% of people said they have ordered a test they found on social media. www.siemens-healthineers.com/en-us/patien...

A little personal story to illustrate how more data can mean more problems: Recently, I tried out one of these test-everything tests. One marker came back slightly elevated. Just in case, my doc ordered a colonoscopy which led to a CT scan which led to the conclusion everything was normal.

You've probably gotten ads in your feed for companies like Function that offer extensive lab tests to keep you healthy (or find out what's wrong). More data isn't always a good thing, though. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/w...

so much this www.newscientist.com/article/2509...

For years, scientists studying reproductive aging regarded most of the ovary as so unimportant that it was literally trashed. Now, emerging research has found that the entire organ plays a role in fertility, menopause, and a woman's overall health. New from me: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/h...

I can’t get over the pivotal plot twist in Jingle Bell Heist in which somehow someone cracks a safe requiring DNA to access it because they are simply RELATED to the safe owner. Not gonna work folks!

So the period panty company Knix funded a documentary on the little pink pill... honestly not sure how to feel about this one www.fastcompany.com/91439618/a-n...

Coverage of IVF 20 years ago vs today: It's too regulated!

A review of reviews found there is not enough evidence to link Tylenol to autism in pregnancy. The assumption is always that women should avoid a drug just *in case* of adverse outcomes. We have got to stop treating pregnant people as vessels for the unborn. www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Allan Brooks, the corporate recruiter from Canada I wrote about in August who went into a 3-week-long delusional spiral with ChatGPT, sued OpenAI Thursday, alongside six other plaintiffs. They blame ChatGPT for their mental breakdowns and for four suicides. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/t...

Michigan is trying to legislate against “fraud” in IVF with the argument that IVF is unregulated. I always think people throw that word around too much with fertility - there are ramifications for fraud in any branch of medicine. IVF included. michiganadvance.com/2025/11/05/m...

Female doctors are making decisions about where to work based on egg-freezing policies. It's a misnomer that most women choose to freeze because of work, but anecdotally, when I DO hear that reason from people, they are often doctors. www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcover...

Remember when NYC would shame you if you didn’t move your car for street-sweeping? www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/n...

I always find it instructive to look at how naysayers talked about new technologies in the past. One of my favorite past critics of IVF is Leon Kass, who was basically convinced it would somehow lead to incest and adultery and the end of our "humanness" www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/...

There are more and more companies out there offering new ways to "control" the health of your future kid. I'm not sure there is any amount of pre-implantation testing that can give future parents the level of control they really desire. Genetics is just not that good! www.axios.com/2025/10/21/a...

Wow to some of the comments are the first IVF baby was born. "Something frogs do in a dirty stream"!

Had no idea the second IVF baby in the world was born in India (but contested). Usually early IVF success is just talked about in terms of US, UK and Austrailia. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

I'm not sure there's any tweak that can actually make IVF "gentle" but this is some good marketing www.sdbj.com/healthcare-2...

The contentious public hearing is one of my favorite genres of news stories.

It's absolutely bonkers that this book is still in print. I promise you, douching with vinegar is definitely not a good way to guarantee a girl. It IS a good way to mess up your vaginal microbiome, though!

I have more that one friend right now convinced they have "mold toxicity." The influence of the black mold truthers is real unherd.com/2025/10/meet...

LaGuardia down to a single taxi runway today thanks to the shutdown. At 9:30 am flights are already backed up

A surprising upside to Taylor Swift's very mid new album: Galvanizing thousands of extremely online Swifties to campaign against the use of generative AI for creative work.

This is why AI poses a threat to the medical profession. Not that it can offer anything a doctor can't (at least not right now)! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Bought the iPhone air in gold, was convinced they accidentally sent me a white phone and convinced them to send me a new one ... it turns out that the gold phone really is just .... white? very confused!

Not every day a skin cell is turned into viable egg! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Many thanks to @kristenvbrown.bsky.social for speaking to our community about "Communicating Science to the Masses" an important and relevant topic!

Apparently the pioneers of IVF had a ghostwriter write their memoir … and he embellished quite a bit. The book came out at a time IVF faced international scrutiny, and really leaned into the narrative of scientists on a quest to end suffering www.cam.ac.uk/stories/ivf-...

On an AA plane bound for Chicago, grounded for over an hour at LaGuardia. Stewardess tells me all flights are grounded due to a computer issue. Didn’t this happen to AA just a few months ago?

Extremely relieved to find that I am still a Pisces, which is way too big a part of my personal identity www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

My family went to the dentist in Mexico growing up, and honestly that was the best dentist I ever had www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I recall the story of Dr. Thomas C. Rainbow, who in mid 1984 wrote an article for Isaac Asimov's magazine about how the current generation could live forever due to medical advancements expected in the next 20 years. The December issue contained his obituary.

"All of us are in a time and place where we will be immortal." If immortality means reincarnation as AI, count me out! @katie-drummond.bsky.social presses the (still mortal!) Bryan Johnson on his plans to live forever www.wired.com/story/big-in...

When I took a break from drinking last fall, I realized that even as an occasional drinker, alcohol played a huge role in my life. Many of my close friendships were forged with the help of booze, as was my marriage. I missed the serendipity and mischief that can come along with a few glasses of wine

This is what we all need and want though! www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/d...

Yet again, the genome proves to be more complex than we'd ever imagined www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cookies is my family's love language and I only kicked my own sugar habit in my twenties when I lived in a country where I found all the desserts entirely disappointing. This @caity.bsky.social is a masterpiece and also entirely relatable

Worth noting: IVM has been around for a long time. Since the 90s! But the economics of the fertility industry (little federal research funding, PE-backed clinics, etc) has made it hard for anything that doesn't increase success rates (or revenue) to get funding.

New scientific techniques are raising the possibility that an alternative to IVF could free thousands of aspiring mothers from brutal protocols, @kristenvbrown.bsky.social reports.

IVF has gotten a lot better since the first IVF baby was born in 1978. What hasn't gotten better? How hard it is on women. But that could soon change. My story on how: www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

I guess I have to watch The Brutalist now www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/m...

I hear a lot about IVF success rates for certain groups needing to improve but the reality is if you don’t have good eggs, IVF is not going to work no matter how good it is (with your own eggs anyway). In other words, there isn’t actually much room for improvement. msmagazine.com/2025/01/16/i...

@nancywalecki.bsky.social lost her neighbor to the Palisades Fire, she writes. He made her childhood neighborhood magical—now both are gone.

Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta's content moderation teams in California will relocate to Texas to reduce bias. In practice, the announcement appears to be more posturing than actual practice: www.wired.com/story/not-ma...

My favorite thing about this is that the husband knows his wife loves an AI, and is totally cool with it...

I've written a lot about polygenic risk scores in DNA testing, which, for at least the time being, are regarded as largely unhelpful (at best). That's because these tests analyze many genes to predict risk of a condition. With our current knowledge of the genome, that's just tough to do.